um, I didn't want to leave out so much detail that I'd, I'd sacrificed the richness and, and, and for, for, to quite a large er, quite a long, long time I managed to keep all the plot lines in, some of the subtleties of which are terribly complicated in the book, about um, about Laddislaw's relationship to Bulstrode's past, we couldn't find a way of doing it in which people who haven't read the book could understand what they were and in fact a lot of people who have read the book can't understand how Laddislaw's grandmother relates to Bulstrode's first wife and so on er, and, and all the intricacies of that relationship and so reluctantly we had to simplify that. Um, I think beyond that we've been completely true to all the, all the stories in the book. Um, and, which is, which is quite something and, and I started off doing things like er, trying to leave out Mrs Cadwalider (?) who is a great character but doesn't actually carry any of the plot er, but in the end I found I couldn't do without her and so, so back she came, which, which I'm very, very glad about really because she's got some of the best lines.

Ref Code: PM-77 Title: Transcript extract from an interview with Andrew Davies, Screenwriter for Middlemarch, p. 116. Date: 1993 Format: .png Source: ITM-7963 Transcripts of interviews with members of the cast and crew of Middlemarch (BBC/WGBH, 1994). Edited for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Educational Developments/BFI (British Film Institute) Education package Screening Middlemarch: 19th Century Novel to 90s Television. Held at BFI, London, UK. http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceArchive/110008677